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原文阅读：联合国称全球扶贫取得意外进展

Up to 80 per cent of the world’s middle classes will live in developing countries by 2030 thanks to surprising recent gains in poverty reduction, according to a United Nations report published on Thursday.

“Never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed so dramatically and so fast,” concludes the UN’s latest Development Report. “The world is witnessing an epochal ‘global rebalancing’.”

Underpinning the improvements in the human development index (HDI) was rapid growth in countries such as China, India and Brazil, with China and India having doubled per capita economic output in less than 20 years.But the study stressed that growth and improvements in HDI spread far beyond the four Bric countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, and included at least 40 countries that had accompanied greater economic dynamism with effective poverty-reduction policies.

Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Angola were among 14 countries that have recorded gains in HDI of more than 2 per cent a year since 2000.Partly as a result, the report found that worldwide extreme income poverty has plunged from 43 per cent in 1990 to just 22 per cent in 2008, including more than 500m being lifted out of poverty in China alone.The report stated that such gains had already helped the world achieve the main poverty eradication goal of the so-called Millennium Development Goals, which called for the share of people living on less than $1.25 a day to be cut by half from 1990 to 2015.

Underpinning this poverty reduction was developing countries’ increasing share of global trade, which grew from 25 per cent to 47 per cent between 1980 and 2010. “The south as a whole is driving global economic growth and societal change for the first time in centuries,” says the report.

The report found that trade among developing countries was the biggest factor in that expansion, increasing from less than 10 per cent of total global trade to more than 30 per cent. “Trade between countries in the south will overtake that between developed nations,” the report said.

学习指南：

1.Word of the day

underpin: If one thing underpins another, it helps the other thing to continue or succeed by supporting and strengthening it. 加强……的基础；巩固，支撑。

ex:...mystical themes that underpin all religions.
例句：支撑所有宗教的神秘主题。

小编注：pin是钉的意思，钉在下面的东西起支撑的作用，这样是不是很好记呢？

2.Phrase of the day

per capita: The per capita amount of something is the total amount of it in a country or area divided by the number of people in that country or area.  人均的；按人计算的。

ex:They have the world's largest per capita income.
例句：他们的人均收入居世界之首。

3.Sentence of the day

“Never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed so dramatically and so fast,” concludes the UN’s latest Development Report. 
联合国在最新的《人类发展报告》中表示：“历史上从未有如此多人的生活条件和前景如此迅速地出现如此巨大的改变。世界正在见证一个划时代的‘全球再平衡’”。

小编注：这句话出自联合国的《人类发展报告》，连用了三个so，从遣词造句的角度看，这样的句子显得非常有气势，也将想要强调的内容强调得更为突出。

4.Cultural point of the day

人类发展指数：以前人们界定一个国家是否属于发达国家，是用人均GDP来界定的，但是由于人均GDP很不稳定，受汇率，物价等影响而波动，而且只反映了经济水平而没有反映一个国家的全面发展水平。因此，联合国开发计划署编制了“人类发展指数”，也就是文中提到的HDI。包括三个指标：预计寿命、成人识字率以及人均GDP。人类发展指数不低于0.8即为发达国家。据2013年最新的数据，中国的HDI为0.699，居世界101位。

5.Translation of the day

The report found that trade among developing countries was the biggest factor in that expansion, increasing from less than 10 per cent of total global trade to more than 30 per cent.
报告还发现，发展中国家之间的贸易是上述贸易增长的最大因素——发展中国家之间的贸易占全球贸易总额的比重从不到10%增至逾30%。

小编注：我们熟悉的发展中国家的译法为“developing country”，而不发达国家称为“underdeveloped country”,如果你看过英剧《是，大臣》第一季第二集的话，也许会对此莞尔一笑，片中的非洲小国因为underdeveloped country太难听而自称为LDC——less developed country，而小汉又把它称为HRRC——human resourse rich country。

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